Ok i'm getting excited can you tell!
So, i'm getting more and more excited about our pending move and i have to say i'm getting VERY impatient BUT, the last 2 days it looks like the engineer has been at the house with his clip board (we are assuming he's the engineer)... so thats good it means we are well on our way to having the last contengency taken care of!

the biggest thing i think i'm totally estatic for.. this house doesn't have ONE LICK of wall paper in the place!!! we were going to prime and paint over the hidous wall paper in this house we are in now (i'm sure you all have noticed it in some pic's of the kids YUCK-O)... i do not enjoy the many examples of grindrs nor do i like the aray of floral in the down stairs bedrooms & living room... so i'm currently eagerly deciding on colors of paint and i think i'm actually on the war path for new furniture for the new house but that will depend on the timing of the move...

i have tried to keep not excited because our luck is that something horrable will go wrong with the land thing and the whole deal will be off but it looks like maybe this will work out! we'll see!
ta ta

The Mystery of the missing Freckles

so KayLea has adorable freckles.. i'm sure she will probably loath them when she is older but they are just a sprinkling on her little face.. she is very fair skined so we are oh so careful and slather her with the heaviest duty sun screen but they still come through and we her whole life have called them Fairy Kisses.. we count them at the beginning of the summer until there are too many to count and then notice when they have all gone in the winter... KayLea will tell you her freckles fade in the winter because Fairy's don't like the cold but this year something kind of interesting has happened.. only half of her freckles have faded so far... my Mom seems to think it's probably because of what way she sleeps (although she's no wear near a window and even if she was she has curtains up) or where the sun hits her from where she sits in the car (again she sits in the middle so this theory doesn't really make much since either).. for what ever reason only half of her freckles have faded so far and here's KayLea's theory for now...

Our house!

Ok i promised better pictures when we could get them.. while the kids and i were away Ben had to get the home inspection done and so he was able to take a few hours and take some pictures.. here are some random ones i chose.. and YES there are FAR more pictures of the Creek running out back than anything else.. wonder what Ben likes about the house??

the creek out back of the house.. and then below some of the inside and back of the house..

Were Back!!!
Well Thanksgiving is done and we are home no worse for ware... we ended up getting bumped a few times and instead of getting home around 4:30 we didn't get home until 9:30 and to top it off i broke my cell phone so getting info to Ben was totally hard.. dallas airport got rid of all of their pay phones.. frankley they probably did it years ago and no one even noticed UNTIL YOUR CELL PHONE BREAKS AND YOU HAVE TO USE A STUPID CALLING CARD!!! frankley it just told me i am way too attached to my cell phone and i felt i don't even use it that much!!! i'm just glad i could buy a calling card in Little Rock.. at least i was able to let Ben know there was major changes to the travel plan.. and my car was already at the airport so it really wasn't that much of a biggie..
so i think everyone is going to be cranky and tired.. and we also have to go grocery shopping.. AND do a little shopping for Bradley's Natures classroom that starts monday and goes to friday..

Our Thanksgiving was great.. My Aunt and Cousin came from California and KayLea was Lindsey's (my cousin age 13) shadow the whole time.. Lindsey was so gracious and didn't seem too annoyed with her... then Livingston Grandparents, Aunt Carol, Uncle Jon Plummer (have to specify that since we have a TON of jon's) and Derrick all came to finish it all out.. along with the "guests" Grandma Merry, Jon, Lynee and their 5 kiddo's (yes i said 5) including a brand new 3 day old baby boy that KayLea thought was just about the best thing ever.. so it was deffenately a full house but lots of fun! now since we took the kids out of school etc.. we probably won't make it to AR for Christmas so this was a fun week with grandma and grandpa and the rest...
i do have some pictures but i havn't even begun to un pack my camera.. i'll post some later.

off to Arkansas..
may not be able to post until back.. internet is sketchy dial up at best..
have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!
ta ta

Happy 5th Birthday KayLea!!

KayLea turned 5 today.. she was excited ALL day, daddy made her spaghetti for lunch and she was eagerly anticipating opening her presants.. only snafoo of the day... her "main" presant didn't come in time!!! i'm REALLY hoping it comes tomorrow so she opened a picture of a kids digital camera.. she has wanted one since she saw her cousin Annie with it last year so she is excited for the mail to come tomorrow (i don't know what i'm going to do if it doesn't come tomorrow.. DARN E-BAY!!)

the "blog-a-sphere" just got smaller!
Well, I really havn't kept up with too many of my high school friends.. Angie Davis (formerlly Hernandez) and i "re-connected" a few years ago and have e-mailed back and forth quite a bit but thats pretty much the extent of it.. well, through some odd connections i found a good old friend CYNTHIA! Winward (formally Harrington) i'm posting about this because i mentioned this to the kids and they had the odd look on their faces like "you had a life BEFORE we were born??" so i went digging through my make-shift high school scrapbook (it's a 3 ring binder with pictures TAPED in with masking tape.. i know HORROR!)

This picture (on left) is of the Young women of the Chino 1st ward if you can pick me out, Cynthia is right next to me on the right (white shirt and blue pattern dress) and Angie is just below me in the red sweater.. of coarse Stephanie is also in the picture (3rd from the left in the black dress).. funny thing i remember about this picture.. Cynthia and I were both sick.. and i actually threw up in the temple!!! funny things you remember! i would be fearful to even guess what year this was.. but our ward was split in 1990 i think and i think this was right before the split


This one (pic to right) is of Cynthia and I at our Jr Prom (1991) it was a fun night.. the picture actually has both our dates in the picture (yea Ben was my date but it seemed weird to cut out her date and not mine) anyway fun times


Cynthia and i also did 4 years of seminary together, and hung out before school because both of our parents wouldn't take us home THEN take us to school... so we always got to school way early.. (at least before we all drove ourselves)..

another funny we actually got married on the same DAY!!! it was way back in the dark ages when all the Temples took the same holiday breaks and were open ONE day for people like us to get married.. so i'm sure several people were married on 12/27/94...

so why did we "drift" apart, i'm not so sure it was anything in particular.. i got a boyfriend and unfortunately i was a typical girl... my girlfriends kind of were secondary (not all together proud of that but it's what happened) and then she went off to byu and we both got married had kids and life happens! all good stuff for sure!!


Anyway it's been fun seeing her blog with her 3 kids.. very fun indeed. and see kids i did live before you!!!
ta ta

Maybe i'll get some sleep now!
Ok, so i think we celebrated a bit too soon.. we accepted their counter offer, then i guess we had some little nit-picky tiny details that we had to work out mostly about when they wanted inspections and deposits done etc.. so FINALLY TODAY WE HAVE A SIGNED CONTRACT FOR SALE!!! of coarse it's still contengent on, aprasal's inspections and the land being sub-divided but finally today i'm not feeilng like i want to throw up...
off to AR on friday!!!
YIPPEE life is good!
ta ta

YEA!!!
Ok first step over, our offer was accepted.. with out getting into the nitty gritty we placed a low ball offer, they countered and offered to pay some closing cost's so it came in RIGHT where we wanted!!! so it's now only contengent upon a couple of things.. and the only bummer is they requested a 90 day closing.. because they are subdividing the property it can take up to 90 days for the town to put the stamp of approval etc..etc.. so we are hoping it won't take that long but you never know with these things..
so we are very excited.. talk about a week with a Nervous stomach!!! but we have quite a while to get packed up, our tenative close date is February 9th.. (which now i'm looking at my calendar and thats a sat.. weird hua!)
anyway it has seemed like the longest dang week ever...
so thats our good news. now i need to go to sleep.. i havn't been sleeping to well stressing over this whole thing.. i guess now i just need to come to terms we are the Bank's for the next 30 years.. it's scary but exciting at the same time!!! We are truly being guided in all of this..
ta ta for now!

Fun times!


this morning i'm filled with gratitude and just sheer enjoyment at all the fun stuff going on.. it is a fun time for sure so i thought i'd share some stuff... (in no particular order)

1. * This afternoon, we will be putting in a written offer on our first home!!! (wish us lots of luck!), here is a pic of the house, it's the tiny listing picture so if all goes well i'll take some better one's if our offer is accepted!!! warning, it's not a very good picture.. thank goodness it looks better in person.. also it's on 3 acres and has a gordious brook running down the property that they stock fish in during trout season.. anyway i'll tell more about it if things go well..
2. * Both of our Brothers (Jack and Matt) are expecting their first baby (ok so their wives are actually expecting but you know what i mean)...
3. * KayLea turnes 5 on the 13th she is so excited i actually think she's going to jump out of her skin at any monent
4. * We are going to go to AR for Thanksgiving, where my 2 Aunts and my Livingston Grandparents will be, it will be fun because i don't think my kids really remember who their "far away great grandparents" are... (although really ALL the grandparents are "far away" grandparents now)...
5. * Ben's schedule finally changed to having Sunday and MOnday's off, he's been having to work sunday's for the past few months and church has been hard with 3 kids by myself..
6. *Ben is doing great with his diet, his blood sugar is averaging in the low numbers for what is acceptable and he's lost enough weight that he can wear his wedding ring again!!! now i just have to get mine reset AGAIN so i don't fear loosing the diamond out of it every time i look at it!!!

Well, thats what i can think of at this monent, i know there are many more things to be thankful for and we are just so blessed!!! it will be exciting to see how this house thing works out...

ta ta for now!

Dejavu!!!
Last night i had such flashbacks from being in Middle School.. i was a chaperone at Bradley's activity night. Bradley was slightly mortified at the prospect of this kept asking "do i have to stay around you?" of coarse not was my response and lucky for him i was assigned where he didn't go all night.. First let me say that this i do like the middle school and the administration..

They do these Activity nights where they do carnival type games in some of the classrooms for the first 90 minutes then they have a dance for the last hour.. well it's become evedent that we had to come up with some family policy regarding school dances and we decided 11 was just too young so Brad (and the rest of the kids) won't be attending school dances until they are 14 it made since due to thats when they can go to Church dances so, its actually a little stricter than my parents were (i know shock hua!) i was allowed in 7th grade.. but this feels right.. so that whole long explination was that our compromise was Brad can go to the game portion of activity night and we will pick him up before the dance starts.. this worked out beautifully since i was chaperoning just the activity portion of the night..

back to the dejavu portion of my evening.. i was assigned to the Gym, where they had basketball and volleyball during the rest of the carnival type games.. my job was to 1 make sure no food or drink came into the gym (the floor was just re-done for the new tenant that will be moving in when we switch to our new school in March).. and 2 to make sure no one killed each other while they played basketball on 3 different courts.. (ok i didn't have to watch 3 courts, there were other parents, i was mostly a hall monitor making sure everyone played nice).. but my "i've been here before" moment was i saw this very cute blonde girl playing with the boys.. seems that was the story of my life in middle school.. i played basketball, tried to play basketball but never made the team so i kept score but hanging with the girls never really intersted me.. i mean i had girlfriends but i seemed to always gravitate to the boys playing volleyball or basketball.. now this girl was far more with it than i ever was in middle school if i had to guess she was an 8th grader with her hip-hugger jeans i didn't really find my clothing style until long after i was married..
Now of coarse i would never mention to this cute girl that she was me 20+ years ago she would be mortified but i just had to grin a little and know times really havn't changed so much..
as for Bradley he was in the library playing video games all night.. he wasn't particularly upset about leaving before the dance so thats good i guess..
so how did i get to this place where i'm a chaperone for my middle school son's activity night... thats for old fogie's... lump me in now i guess!!!
ta ta for now

Happy Halloween,

well it was a fun festive day, we started out with KayLea and i going to our weekly visit to the preschool story time at the Library and decorating fun halloween cookies, then we came home i made a fruit salad quickly then we jetted off to Hunter's school to see the Halloween parade and go to his party.. Hunter's parade and party is always fun, we got to see everyone's costumes and our principal always dresses up.. and KayLea got to feel like a big girl cuz she got to sit up to an empty desk and be like one of the students.. Hunter's friends are always so nice to her and it makes her feel so good! then last night we went to a friends house (who actually lives in a REAL neighborhood) and went trick or treating.. we didn't go last year because the kids had trunk or treat at church but this year they cancelled it so we really had to scramble to find something for them to do.. luckely a friend from church came through YEA!

this is KayLea at the Library after her cookie was done

KayLea waiting for the parade to start and Hunter in the Parade & Hunter's Party the big green super hero is Mr. Spadero his principal, and Hunter doing the limbo, can't say he's the most flexable of kids haha.. can you believe KayLea will be able to be in the parade NEXT YEAR!!! fun stuff!

then the whole brood that went Trick or Treating.. unfortunately this is the only picture we have of Brad.. he's too old and cool to have Halloween parade's and parties at school, so this is the only shot we have of him.. He was a "hobo" although it's very UN PC to say that now but oh well who says we are PC ever! Hunter was Harry potter and KayLea was a kitty witch for the morning and then just a kitty in the evening (we had great battles with the head wear) so so another Halloween is done..

i guess this means i really have to start thinking about CHRISTMAS! EEEK!

anyway we are all good and had a fun time...

ta ta

ps click on the picture to see them better/bigger

Ok so I totally missed the boat on this one..

ok i said i was going to go down to our little harbor and the prety fall colored trees were framing our little light house so nicely well i waited one day too late.. we have had some super winds and well all of the pretty leaves were well on the ground.. i was so bummed but since i actually made the effort to go down and shoot it i just carried on and took some pic's of this beautiful landscape right down my street..

this is of the lake patrol boat at the docks..

the next one is of our sweet light house.. it's a minature model of coarse but it's still cute

and of coarse our caboose, this town was a major rail way stop, the kids would actually take the train to go to school in Newport or Warner (a few towns in either direction)... and it was a major tourist stop for all the folks from Boston.. we've never actually been able to go inside the caboose the almost 2 years we've lived here, we've never been able to stop when it's been open (only a few times a year)..and this is the view from the Lake, you can see i'm telling the truth about all the pretty colors finally coming out..

Ok now's the time where i spill on why are all these pic's cute but look funny.. i decided to use one of my new lenses (the wide angle i think) and well i obviously need to practice a bit more with them but i'm having fun doing it!!! i think Ben's a little sorry he got my camera for me for my birthday it's created a monster forsure!!!

anyway i know i'm late posting that but this where we live.. and why we LOVE it!!